How to dye dark/black hair pastel pink

Every girl who has dark hair always has trouble figuring out how to get light pink pastel hair, because let’s face it- it’s almost impossible to achieve exactly what you want. There are so many problems I, or other people, have encountered while trying to do this, but let me assure you, this process is possible, and there is a way for you to do it yoruself. I’ll tell you all about how I did mine, and show you how it came out.

This is what it came out looking like:

I want this post to be as helpful as possible, since when I was researching how to do this, and trust me, I spent countless countless hours scouring every corner of the internet, I never found a complete guide on how to do this. I messed up a few times, but learned from my mistakes, so first I’m going to tell you what I did, all of my mistakes, and then what the ideal way to do it would be.

Possible Problems

–Salons refuse to bleach your hair: Many dark-haired girls (especially girls with black or close to black hair) have gone to hair dressers and asked to go blonde(which is the color you must have before getting pastel or light colored hair), and got an immediate “NO WAY!” response. This is because in order to go blonde you have to bleach your hair. The transition from black or dark browns to blonde is such a crazy one that requires a lot of bleach to get rid of all of the dark pigment in your hair. This is why many salons refuse to do this for people. Bleach damages hair, and if a dark haired girl wanted to go blonde, it would require more than one bleaching, which could, worst-case-scenario, cause your hair to fall out or become fried/brittle. Stylists don’t want to be held responsible for this if it happens, so if you really want to go blonde, you’re going to have to do it yourself. Don’t worry though, because I’ve got your back on this one!

–Afraid your hair will turn yellow: This is a real problem that you should actually worry about. It does happen to the best of us, and that’s because hair has naturally warm undertones in it, so once you start lightening it, the yellow will show itself. When I bleached my hair, I did get a bit of the dreaded yellow, but that was expected (I had done meticulous research beforehand so I knew what to expect 😀 ). The ways to get rid of the yellow is to first, bleach your hair until you have the desired lightness (ignoring the yellow– If you want to go for a really super light blonde or pastel color and you need your hair to be basically white, bleach until its a very super light yellow) and then use a hair toner. These are designed to take the yellow out of bleached hair, and work like a charm! Don’t get the wrong one, or else it could turn your hair gray/silver instead of white! We will discuss that later on in the post.

–Hair falling out: This is a major concern for those who have never bleached their hair before. As long as your hair is fairly healthy before you bleach it, and you don’t leave the bleach in for too long, your hair won’t fall out. Trust me, I’ve bleached my hair multiple times and nothing happened. Remember it’s not a good idea to put the bleach directly on your scalp, and if you do, don’t leave it on for too long!

–Dry hair: This is inevitable. After processing hair in harsh ways like bleaching, hair becomes dryer, which is why it’s a good idea to pre-deep-condition your hair a week before you dye your hair, which I mention later. You also need to make sure you keep you hair well moisturized after it’s colored. Use lots of conditioner, deep conditioner, Moroccan oil, hot oil treatments, everything that will keep your hair soft and luscious!

–Roots and upkeep: Keeping up with re-doing your roots once they grow in is an issue, and you’ll just have to commit to touching them up every now and then. There’s no way to stop them from growing in, but I would recommend to keep lots of bleach, developer, and extra hair dye on hand to make your job easier.

–Fading color: This is not preventable, so the only thing you can do is keep extra dye on hand and use it for touch ups. It’s not much of a hassle.

–People judging you: People will judge you no matter what, but you’re not dying your hair for other people – you’re dying it for yourself, so as long as you like it, what others think doesn’t matter.

My experience

Here’s what I did to mine. It’s not the perfect way to do it, but through trial and error, I was able to accomplish my goal. After I tell you everything I did, read the Ideal process to see how it should really be done.

Here’s the brown I started out with:

1. Deep conditioned a week before.

2. On the day of, applied petroleum jelly around my hairline so the dye and bleach didn’t get on my skin.

3. Mixed about 1 oz of bleach with 1 oz of 30 volume cream developer and applied to my hair, starting at the roots, then working my way down. Left it on for 45 to 60 minutes.

4. Washed and rinsed my hair, then blow-dryed it.

5. Repeated steps 3 and 4.

6. Used my toner with the 10 volume developer and toned my hair for about 45 minutes.

12. Applied the dye straight to my hair without any conditioner, getting a neon pink color when wet, washed it out and watched all the color wash out again.

13. Realized that Color Jamz hair dye sucks.

14. Bought Manic Panic hair dye in the color “Cotton Candy”, which is an amplified version at Hot topic.

15. Appied new hair dye with a bit of conditioner to lighten it.

16. Washed it out, blow dried it.

(This is what my roots came out looking like, and so did the rest of the hair)

17. Enjoyed my hair

Ideal process

1. Deep conditioned a week before.

2. On the day of, apply vaseline around your hairline so the dye and bleach don’t get on your skin.

3. Strip the color from you hair using a hair dye stripper if you have pre-colored hair.

4. Mix about 1 oz of bleach with 1 oz of 30 (or 40, depending on how dark your hair was, I wish I used 40) volume cream developer and apply to hair, starting at the ends, then doing the roots. Leave it on for 45 to 60 minutes.

5. Washed your hair, then blowdry it.

6. Repeated steps 3 and 4 if it’s not almost white.

7. Used toner with 20 volume developer, or whatever it tells you to do in the instructions, and tone yoru hair for about 45 minutes.

8. Washed out the toner and blowdry.

9. Wear your blonde hair to school for two days. If you want to. You should have fun being a blonde before you aren’t one anymore!

10. Apply a mixture of the good hair dye (Manic Panic or Ion Color Brilliance are my favorites) and mix it with some of your favorite conditioner to get a shade slightly darker than you want your hair to turn out (I love Garnier Tripple Nutrition conditioner). Leave it in for however long you want to, it won’t damage your hair leaving it in longer than 45 minutes, but it won’t make too much of a difference past that time. Wash it out, then blowdry it.

11. Enjoy your hair

Tips from my experiences

-look up hair dye reviews before getting one

-don’t add the color until you’re satisfied with the bleaching job you did

-follow the instructions on your toner as to what volume developer to get

-buy the big tub of bleach because it’s wayyyyy more worth it than buying a bunch of the little packets (see the math in the video) in the long run and will be useful for touching up your roots

-watch my video to see all the rest of my tips

-subscribe to my blog and Youtube channel for more about hair and other cool things I’m doing because I will be posting more about hair

I’m glad you found it helpful!!! It is soo much work, idk why I started all of this, it drives me crazy having to keep up with the roots and fading color haha. Sorry for taking so long to answer, I had a bit of a comment spam problem over the past few months D:

I used the color jamz bubble head pink and it worked perfect on my hair. I have fushia hair like I wanted. I think you shouldn’t have mixed it with conditioner. Using conditioner actually prevents the dye from penetrating your hair. These dyes are just stains so any oil or softening agent would block the hair from taking the dye. Manic panic sells a product called pastelizer that you mix with the dye so it comes out a pastel color. And also the virgin snow to get the yellow out. You had a lot of yellow tones in your hair still. After the bleaching you do not want to use any conditioner so you have no built up oils on your hair. The semi-permanent dye will soften the hair and you can condition after. The idea is to have the damaged dry hair when you add the pink dye.

I agree with you-we tried 2 different colors of the ColorJamz and we had similar results of nothing happening. And it was put DIRECTLY on the hair, too. It looked cool while it was on “cooking” but as soon as we washed it out it all went down the drain and we were left with nothing. Never will use it again. The Ion brand in Sally’s makes a good dye, too, but I have found the blues and purples work better than the pinks.

thank u so much for showing me how to do it correctly omg I have never done anything to my hair and this was my first time doing anything and it was amazing I am now a blonde and it matches me yayy me thank you so much do u have an instagram .. twitter… facebook.. ??!!

This is so useful, thank you! The pink looks really good on you, I have a similar hair type so this is encouraging me to go ahead and try dyeing it. Quick question: in that last picture you’re wearing a super cute lace collar/necklace thing, where is that from? I really like it. Thanks again

Thank you so much! If you do this, send me a picture! Tweet me or tag me on instagram or something, I’d love to see it! I bought a shirt at a thrift shop with a really cute collar that was like a dollar or less, cut off the collar, threw away the rest of the shirt, and kept the collar as a necklace! 😛

I live in the UK and I have black hair and have been trying to get it pastel for ages! We don’t have the same brands as you and I have spent soo much trying to get it the right colour. My problem is I can’t get it white enough, even though I’ve now used hair stripper, bleach about 100 times, and white toner and then pastel pink! Anyway..nevertheless your post have been very helpful and I’m trying to follow the steps and lightness you achieved before putting the pink again

Getting it white enough is the most important step for doing super pastel colours, so I would recommend using a 40 volume developer when bleaching, if you can afford to bleach again as I don’t know how many times you have done that and I don’t want you to fry your hair. I’m so glad you found this post helpful!

Thanks for asking; I can’t believe I forgot to include that in my post! I used the shade “Cotton Candy”. I just added that in the post, thanks for catching that! I used this dye with only about 10% conditioner because I didn’t want to lose too much of the color since it is light to start out with. You could use it without any conditioner and it would work. And thank you so much!! 😀

I hope you do and I’m sure it will look amazing. I’m probably going to do one of those colors next, I’m trying to decide between those three, silver, and keeping the blonde that I have now and it’s such a hard choice!

Hey! none of the images worked for me, so I couldn’t see the full result except for the very first image. It might be a problem at my end, but your step by step was awesome.

I’m really thinking of dying my whole head pink (I’ve only had streaks before) and you list included many things I forgot to think about, like the waiting between bleach and dyeing to let your hair rest!

My links were all messed from when I switched domain names and I was finally able to fix them today, so you can see them now. I’m so glad you were still able to follow the tutorial while the photos weren’t even showing up! I’m so glad you found it helpful and I wish you good luck with your hair!!

Thanks for this post, all the how-to’s I found for going pastel or light colors from dark colors were for straight hair, so your post is helpful. I have some questions tho.
I have texlaxed hair that I condition like the fucker has three hours to live, but I haven’t touched up, I am growing it out cause I am ADD and very bored. I want very light blue or very light lavender, I have decided.
I have bleached little strands of hair before but I’ve only left the bleach on my hair for 30 minutes, and it’s always 30 developer. I don’t want to fry my hair, so let’s say the following list of things was what I did and used, would that be legit and, in theory, would it get my hair the color I want it to be?
40D for 35-40 minutes.
Manic Panic White Snow instead of toner, since I can use it as many times in a row as I want without the risk of my hair deucing out. (If that doesn’t work then, fine, regular 20Toner)(If Manic Panic White Snow works then I would follow with these steps on the same day, right? No? Am I off my rocker?)
Any MP color mixed with Pastelizer, until I reach my desired color.